Law #CR7 - Awards, nominations, and the worthiness of being
“The greatest award is the appreciation of the people.”
…at the receiving end of them.
In the time since I took my writing break, a few events took place that I was not able to analyze properly until now. Two are most notable from the perspective of this discussion:
The Ballon D’Or Award
The Game Awards nominations (not yet awarded at the time of writing)
The Ballon d’Or Award…
…was given to Lionel Messi this year. Just like in 2021. 8th Ballon d’Or, quite a performance, one would say.
But if you think about it better, it is not an athletic performance or a trophy, as much as a nomination, since the Ballon d’Or is given based on the way a set of journalists cast their votes. It is a completely subjective award. Like any election, it has little to do with performance and more with the personal preference of those who nominate.
Messi is nothing short of a football genius, that I agree with, but he wasn’t the best player of the 2023/2024 season. He hasn’t been the best player of a season in a few years now. Yes, he won a World Cup, and while he played better in the World Cup than in any other competition that season, he wasn’t in his best form even then, with teammate Angel DiMaria far outmatched him in performance. So if this trophy were to go to the best player in this season, it certainly wouldn’t go to Messi.
Arguably, the best performance in the 23/24 season belonged to Manchester City, helmed by Josep Guardiola. They won the treble as a team from the most competitive league in the world, the Premier League.
You know the Premier League? It’s that league where Lionel Messi never played.
Two players were crucial to this performance: Kevin DeBruyne and Erling Haaland. Any one of them would have been a worthy receiver of this trophy, as they both outperformed Messi in both statistics (average rating) and accomplishments (performance/goal contributions etc). They were not the only ones, but they were the most notable.
That being said, if the best player is not receiving this trophy, then is this award worthy of being taken seriously?
Speaking of awards not to be taken seriously.
The Game Awards…
…nominations were announced, and there’s a very interesting absentee from the list.
I’m talking, of course, about Hogwarts Legacy, a title that was launched in early 2023 and represented the comeback of Harry Potter games on major platforms (PC + Consoles).
There are other games on the list, some solid titles and real contenders, like Baldur’s Gate 3 (big chances to win, but sort of niche game, most people that say it’s great did never play the previous titles, not to mention other games in the genre, so it’s popularity is sort of artificial), Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom (sequel and visual clone of Zelda: Breath of the Wild), but also some with less chances, like Alan Wake 2 (sequel to Alan Wake and another Remedy masterpiece, unfortunately only released digitally, which I despise, and also quite of a niche game), Super Mario Bros Wonder (Mario is always a great game, but Mario is also always Mario, so there’s nothing out of the ordinary with this Mario Bros title, it’s just as good and as popular as most other Mario Bros titles), Resident Evil 4 Remake (which, as the name says, is a Remake, and there’s usually little competition here) and Marvel’s Spiderman 2 (which is the sequel to Marvel’s Spiderman and is viewed in the same manner as Zelda: ToTK, but has much less popularity).
Hogwarts Legacy was arguably the most popular game of the year (I will get into the numbers soon), but its launch was tainted by a boycott attempt from the LGBTQ+ community due to J.K. Rowling, who they seem to dislike. It did not matter that she wasn’t part of the development of this game, and it did not matter that the game itself even had a trans character, what mattered was that J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter.
Even though the boycott attempt occurred, it served to create more publicity for the game, so I would say it backfired in a big way. The game sold over 15 million copies as of the May 5th report. This information was released before the game was launched on PS4 and Xbox One, with the game initially available only on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X, therefore those are partial numbers. The overall sales of the series are not yet public information, but it stands to reason since it also launched on Nintendo Switch later that the actual number is far greater.
As such, the most popular game of the year is missing from the GOTY nominations. This is most likely related to the controversy that led to the boycott as well, and the motive behind the decision is most likely the fact that the Game Awards are based on a popular vote. If Hogwarts Legacy was on the list, it would have taken a boatload of votes, threatening to even win the GOTY award. So they made sure this wouldn’t happen by excluding it.
The game is not only absent from the GOTY nominations, it is absent from any other nominations from The Game Awards. And there is no logical reason you would exclude one of the (if not the) bestselling game(s) of the year from ALL the nominations, this simply doesn’t happen and never did before. Therefore, the conclusion is this is intentional.
Given all this data, are The Game Awards still a trustworthy award system? What is the point in nominating for a prize if you don’t nominate all the entities that are worthy of the prize? Maybe Hogwarts Legacy is not the best game of this year, but it is certainly worthy of that nomination based on how popular it was.
As a side note, there’s a hidden gem that I consider one of the best games of 2023 but was also not included in any nominations, most likely due to the lack of popularity. The game is “RoboCop: Rogue City”, and you guessed it, it’s based on RoboCop. It’s a fresh, new, original story in the RoboCop universe, and it not only retains the original characters but also has them licensed. The faces are all the familiar ones from the original film, which means it carries a lot of nostalgia on top of it.
I have always liked tie-in games based on movies because they stimulate the developers to think outside the box and develop original gameplay styles, and I always give the Harry Potter series as an example, as well as a few Shrek games or a couple of Smurfs titles.
RoboCop: Rogue City is no exception, as it’s not exactly your run-of-the-mill FPS game, it just has FPS elements carefully threaded within. It’s story-driven, it also has RPG elements, and the decisions you make will affect RoboCop’s public image and his relationship with the Police Force.
While I can understand why it’s missing from the nominations, I highly advise every gamer to play it, especially the nostalgic ones. It’s worth the time.
“The greatest award is the appreciation of the people.” - Gopi Sundar